


the things we have to live without

by chasu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Domestic, Engagement, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Nonbinary Character, Other, Reminiscing, Slice of Life, Social Anxiety, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasu/pseuds/chasu





	1. Chapter 1

It’s late when Kuroo gets home, and of course he makes a commotion of it.

Kenma’s curled up on the sofa, his entire body pushed against the armrest, knees at his chest and his 3DS in his hands. The television is on, a police drama droning on, but Kenma still hears the slam-open of the front door followed by the uselessly soft close of it. Kuroo’s footsteps loud enough to torture the downstairs neighbours as he makes his way to the bedroom, rattling the coathangers while he changes out of his work clothes, and then he comes back through the hallway and into the living room.

He just doesn’t know how to be quiet. Even his mere presence is so loud that, without looking, Kenma can feel him there, expectant, in the doorway.

If he wasn’t in the middle of an online battle, he’d get up and give Kuroo a kiss hello. He also would’ve made dinner and put something more interesting on the TV and maybe, presently, he’d be getting Kuroo a beer and his reading glasses so can relax and doesn’t have to squint at his tablet like he usually does when he sits down in the evenings.

Kenma doesn’t get up because they’ve learned to compromise. He can feel Kuroo watching him as he executes a perfect combo and knocks his opponent flying. Just watching, leaning in the doorway like he does sometimes, probably wondering why Kenma is sitting here in the dark - wondering how long he’s been at this, if it was dark at all when he sat down.

"Babe," he says, at last, in greeting. Kenma barely grunts in response. “When are you going shopping?”

Kenma blinks at the console in his hands, unseeing. Lately they’ve been taking turns ducking into the convenience store on the way home at nights, paying too much for not a lot and all of it’s plastic-wrapped and from the discount aisle. Now that Kenma thinks about it, it’s hard to remember the last time he ate actual vegetables; ones that weren’t shrivelled among some kind of powder and floating in a water-filled cup. Days, at least. It must have been Sunday night, family night, his parents’ cooking - it’s Friday now and that’s an awful thought.

He didn’t hear the exaggerated crinkle of grocery bags when Kuroo came in - he didn’t hear him go into the kitchen at all.

“Tomorrow,” he replies, decisively even though he would not have remembered if not for the prompting, and without looking up from the game. “I hate instant ramen.”

Kuroo laughs as he says, “What? No,” and Kenma’s head snaps up as he snaps down the top of his 3DS. Kuroo is still hovering there, next to the couch, but there’s something in his hands that Kenma didn't notice before, cover displayed for him to see. A magazine with a woman on the front; long-necked, elegant with her hair braided and pinned into an updo with soft curls down to frame her face, dress peppered and sparkling with tiny silver jewels, arranged in trails from her waist. A white dress. Bridal.

Kenma doesn’t hold out his hand for the magazine. Kuroo hands it over anyway.

  
*

  
Kenma's had a rock on his finger for about two months now, and he still isn't used to it. It serves as a constant, ever-present reminder of his fiancé and their future. The grounding heaviness of it when he has to put it on a chain and wear it around his neck when Kuroo takes him to play volleyball at the sports centre, white gold and a miniature diamond tucked beneath his shirt. Cold and then hot against his chest as the game plays on.

Kuroo has a new habit of taking his hand and kissing it, over the ring, as though they're in a period drama where Kenma is the governor's daughter and he the lovable rogue. It almost makes up for the way strangers tend to look at it like it doesn't belong there, and the bitter way that makes him feel.

Engaged at Kenma's twenty and Kuroo's twenty-one, everyone thinks they're crazy, even if they pretend to fawn over the ring and the idea of a summer wedding and ask polite questions about who's taking what last name.

Kenma thinks that maybe they're right, and for some reason, he's okay with that. 

  
*

  
They order takeout, and Kenma watches from his fortified position on the couch as Kuroo starts setting their places at the table, with coasters and everything, humming as he goes about it. He potters around and washes plates and lights a vanilla-lime candle that Kenma has always privately considered his favourite.

Over dinner the magazine sits between them like a weight, an ivory centrepiece in the middle of the table.

"I thought it would be a nice way to start wedding planning," Kuroo explains when he catches Kenma staring at it for the third time, entirely too lost in thought to care how obvious he's being. The model on the cover stares back at him, smiling and wan. "You and Hinata could make a day of it, shopping for the dress or the tux or whatever."

"Or whatever," Kenma agrees, and then scoops another helping of rice saturated with far too much sauce into his mouth.

Kuroo licks sweet orange sauce off one of his fingertips, and then picks up the magazine and begins to flick through it, perusing. "You could wear a pantsuit," he says, even though Kenma knows full and well that there are no pantsuits in the bridal magazine.

He lays his chin in his hand, still looking at his plate. "To my wedding. I'd look like I was there as someone's personal assistant."  
  
"Yes," Kuroo says easily, turning another page. The sight reminds Kenma of an older man reading the newspaper at breakfast, except Kuroo doesn't have a coffee or a cigar, and he's wearing Star Wars pyjama pants instead of slacks. "You'd be a beautiful, powerful, newlywed personal assistant. With shoulder pads and a tiara."

The idea is both shudder-worthy and brutally realistic, if he doesn't find something better by the time August rolls around. Kenma can't quite bring himself to vocalize that. All he can say is a defeated, "Kuro."

The magazine falls to the tabletop, abandoned. The model still glowing, delighted and holding her bouquet of white roses and lilac close to her chest. Kenma wonders, fleetingly, if Kuroo wants him to wear a dress or if that would be another compromise. Maybe tomorrow Kuroo will come home with a magazine about tuxedos. And then one about pantsuits the next day.

Kuroo must see the way he cringes at that, because he lays his hand over Kenma's where it's been resting on the table, lax with his distraction. "Don't worry about it," he says, and gives Kenma's hand a little squeeze, which he returns. "We have plenty of time to figure it out."

They fall into silence as they eat. Kenma doesn't want to let go of Kuroo's hand yet, so he doesn't, and they get along just fine like that. Kuroo picks up a spring roll from the carton with his other hand and drops it onto Kenma's plate, an absent habit because he's convinced that Kenma doesn't eat enough. It's nowhere near as deliberate as the way he kisses that ring at every opportunity.

Kenma has to let go when Kuroo gets up and takes Kenma's half-full glass of water to top it up at the sink. He's convinced that Kenma doesn't drink enough, too.

Kenma watches him and considers that word. _We._  

 


	2. Chapter 2

   Days later, Kenma sits very still on a chair in Shouyou's kitchen, letting his gaze swivel to the ceiling when a small, quick hand darts out to grab the front portion of his hair, gathering it and sliding in a barrette to pin it to the crown of his head. Then, Shouyou crouches until they're level, but when Kenma makes an attempt at eye contact, he finds the redhead still contemplating his hair with all the focus he has.

   "Yeah," he sighs appreciatively, when his analysis is over. "He's right. A tiara would look good on you."

   Kenma wiggles in his seat. Already, he wishes he had never told Shouyou that. It was supposed to be a _joke_ ; if not in Kuroo's original assessment, then at least in Kenma's retelling of it.

   "No," he says.

   "You sure?" Shouyou asks, but he slides the barrette out and slips it into the pouch at his waist, tied around with a black belt. It's full of clips and scissors, a sharp glint of metal every time he moves, and the kitchen counters around them are cluttered with spray bottles and plastic jars of goop.

   Kenma loves this little kitchen. he always has. whoever lived here before shouyou left it with mismatched doors on the cabinets and the most obnoxious, pink-and-white checked linoleum that Kenma has ever seen. The highlights: a volleyball-themed calender, a tiny gumball machine, a rickety wooden table with ugly yellow stools. To outsiders, it's an eyesore of a room, but for Kenma, it's a year's worth of memories of breakfasts cooked, reluctant tickle-fights had, games completed right at that rickety table, right on his favourite of the ugly yellow stools.

   "What about something more natural? Liiike... a flower crown?" Shouyou hums as he he twirls a lock of blond around one finger. "I could give you beachy waves."

   He takes a clump of hair and scrunches it thoughtfully, even though his hands are clean and free of product and it does nothing. Shouyou's been presiding over Kenma's hair for a few years now, and Kenma is a willing model because Shouyou never gets the hairspray in his eyes and never harasses him about his roots when he doesn't feel like getting them dyed. Kenma trusts him, but maybe not that much. Not enough to go walking up the aisle with a ring of daisies on his head.

   Kenma frowns. "I don't think so."

   "Oka-ay. Then what about a ponytail?" Shouyou suggests next, moving around to stand at Kenma's back and sweep the hair up, gathered into his fist, low enough to be formal. "You know, like how a guy would wear it? You can't hide your face from us forever, Kenma," he teases, his fingertips flitting around at Kenma's hairline, making sure all the stray wisps at the front are neatly pulled back. He produces a hairtie from seemingly nowhere and fixes it like that, almost painfully tight.

  
*

  
   The sun has set by the time Kageyama comes home from work with dinner in hand. He enters much more quietly than Kuroo usually does, and looking somewhat grumpier than Kuroo usually does to boot; Kenma doesn't blame him because he has two pizza boxes and a two-litre bottle of soda, which is a lot to carry up the stairs. His hair is ruffled and it looks like he's just come in from a storm, but he softens some when he sees Kenma sitting there in the kitchen.

   Kenma doesn't move from his perch, feeling like an exhibit on display, conspicuous in the middle of the room with approximately two thirds of his hair done in slender curls, reading his magazine with the bride on the front because it's an excuse not to acknowledge what he knows is coming next.

   He brought the magazine with him in the first place because he wanted to discuss it with Shouyou, though he doesn't really know how. In hindsight, it's probably Kageyama who would better understand how he feels. Indifferent but not. Like on a personal level he'd be just as happy taking the easy way out and showing up to the ceremony in a potato sack, but things are never that simple, and people are never so obliging. And then he'd get a lecture from Kuroo about how you only get married once, which would hit Kenma where it hurts because it's not like he doesn't know. It's not like anybody _really_ wants to wear a potato sack to their wedding.

   Kenma sighs, but Kageyama barely looks at him while he puts the pizza boxes and the bottle down on the counter. Shouyou is already hovering, curling wand abandoned on a protective pad. When he sees his moment, he strikes - Kenma watches from over the top of the magazine as Shouyou flings himself in Kageyama's direction, hugging him around the middle, and then comes the torrent of "baaabe, I missed you" and "how was your day?" and "wow your shirt smells so good, you used that new body wash i got you right?" and Kageyama turns around, dutifully, so that Shouyou can throw his arms around his neck and then nuzzle against it. He kisses the top of Shouyou's head, and with his face still half-buried in orange hair, he gives Kenma a look that says, _sorry_.

   Kenma shrugs and concentrates extra hard on a page featuring exclusively garters until Shouyou detaches himself.

   "Oh yeah! Kenma's letting me play with his hair," he announces, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "What do you think of the curls? For the wedding?"

   Kageyama looks. _Really_ looks. He narrows his eyes. Kenma squirms again.

   "They look..." Kageyama struggles to find his words. "Half-finished?"

   "Well, they are." Shouyou folds his arms, huffy. "Geez."

   "Excuse me," Kenma says, and sets the down magazine on his chair before he leaves for the bathroom to see the half-finished curls for himself. Shouyou and Kageyama don't watch him go; the second his back is turned he hears wet kissing noises behind him, and Kenma considers rolling his eyes, but doesn't. Still, he thinks, there's such a thing as being _too_  comfortable in someone's presence -- and maybe it's just as well Kuroo isn't here to be subjected to them and their brand of romance. 

  
*

  
   Kenma comes around every Tuesday night, and every Tuesday night they get two pizzas - one with pepperoni, one with half margherita and half just pineapple, and Kageyama and Kenma look on with mirrored disgust as the sweet, shimmering golden juice drips from the corner of Shouyou's mouth, and he licks it off, as much as he can before wiping at his chin with the back of his hand.

   "Fruit is for dessert," Kageyama reminds him, mildly, every time.

   "Eat your boring pizza," Shouyou usually replies, but sometimes he pouts his lips as though asking for a kiss instead. sometimes even goes as far as leaning right over and putting himself in Kageyama's space before they all laugh it off and Kageyama elbows him away, and Kenma averts his eyes from the smile they share.

   It's the social highlight of Kenma's week, and Kuroo is always invited, but he never comes, and Kenma doesn't ask twice. He supposes it's for the best, for them to be apart sometimes. For Kenma to have some semblance of a life outside of their relationship, while Kuroo goes out with his own friends and doesn't bother to ask Kenma along at all. He knows, by now, that Kenma will just give him a look to say, _you must be kidding_ , because that would be his own personal hell. He can't even tell kuroo's friends apart well enough to remember their names and he doesn't like them enough to try.

  
*

  
   "I think Kuro wants me to wear a dress."

   When he finally brings up the topic, Kenma is sprawled across the whole length of the couch. His head is in Shouyou's lap, one of Shouyou's hands carding through his still-curled hair, and his socked feet are on the armrest beside Kageyama. Every so often, Kageyama raises a hand to play with his toes, pinching lightly at the first and then the second and working his way across and then back again, letting his thumb press under the ball of Kenma's foot, drift down over the arch -- that, in addition to the sensation of fingertips in his hair, teasing at his scalp in a way that Shouyou is surreally good at, has Kenma drowsy and boneless, and they easily take his weight between them.

   Kenma thinks he deserves it, kind of, considering he spent the better part of a year lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling while the headboard in the room next door rattled incessantly against the shared wall, or waking up to frantic groaning from the shower that shared the _other_  wall. Such is life, when you share an apartment with a budding relationship.

   Even now, Kenma supposes that it's possible that they don't know how thin the walls are. But it's equally possible that they do, and that's why they still buy him pizza every Tuesday evening.

   (And invite him over, entertain him, talk to him. put up with him.) Kenma blinks his eyes open and finds Shouyou looking down at him, smiling softly, and he does his best to smile back. He's sure it comes out more like a grimace.

   "To the wedding," he clarifies, at their lack of a response. "He said i can wear whatever i want, but he gave me that bridal magazine."

   Shouyou seems to understand; his brow furrows, and momentarily, his hand stills. "Why would he want you to wear a dress?"

   "I think he's trying to be..." Kenma hesitates. "...understanding."

   "He probably is," Shouyou agrees instantly.

   Kenma blinks and stares up at him. "Really?"

   Shouyou shrugs. "You don't really make it easy to understand."

   Kenma supposes that's true. Shouyou isn't a mind reader, even if he acts like one sometimes; and Kuroo isn't either, even if they eat, sleep and breathe together every day of the year, now, living in each other's pockets. Proximity does not a telepathic bond make, but if only...

   "How could I make it easy?"

   It's Kageyama who answers, straightforward but not blunt. He tweaks Kenma's smallest toe, teasing him. "You could tell people what you want."

   "What I want now might not be what I want on the day. I don't know how I'll..." Kenma's brain lingers on _feel_ , but he can't bring himself to say it. "Cope. With what I choose." He keeps his eyes on the ceiling. "It's hard to tell when it's going to creep up on you."

   "So what are you going to do?" Kageyama asks, and Kenma can only sigh in response.

   "Nothing," he says.  

   "You're the strategist." Shouyou pats his head, trying to reassure him like one might reassure a startled dog. "You'll figure it out."

   "And you're the decoy. Maybe you could take my place at the last second if it all goes wrong."

   "And legally marry Kuroo? I'm tempted, sometimes..."

   "Rude." Kageyama elbows Shouyou and sets him off laughing; Kenma closes his eyes and lets himself smile along.

  
*

  
   It's past midnight when Shouyou drops Kenma off at home, beeping his horn twice and waking the neighbours. A few lights flicker on in response. The night is pale, frost-bitten, and Kenma soon realises that he's gotten from the car to the building's front door without turning around, all swaddled in his coat. He looks back and waves with a gloved hand, and Shouyou is already waving, of course, enthusiastically, even though he must be tired. He hits the horn one more time, with his elbow.

   Kenma turns around and goes inside, hearing the car pull away just as the door clatters shut behind him.

   He can feel himself slouching, his legs unwilling to handle the two flights of stairs he has to deal with before he can slot his key into the apartment door and crawl directly into bed, fully clothed and full of pizza. The stairwell smells like vintage cigarette smoke, so stale that Kenma could believe that the smell has lingered here for as many years as he's been alive. Shouyou's place is so much nicer, and never has those spiders crawling up from the drains or making webs along the banister. The thought makes Kenma shudder and pick up the pace a little.

   He'd moved right in after the engagement, which had been a surprise in itself. Kuroo had explained, after the fact, that it had been spur-of-the-moment impulsive; that he'd looked so perfect sitting there with his hot chocolate, and Kuroo had known right there and then that he wanted them to spend the rest of their lives together, and he'd gotten down on one knee, and Kenma had said, "Okay."

   And then Kuroo had taken him to an ATM, and then a jewellery store.  

   Everyone laughed when Kenma relayed the story about being proposed to in a Starbucks, but it didn't sting at all when they did. For him, it was the best he could have hoped for. Modest. In the days following the news, they got a lot of white-and-gold cards from their family and friends, all of which were situated in Kuroo's apartment. By then, it just made sense for Kenma to go with them. 

   "We have to get used to married life," Kuroo had reasoned while packing Kenma's coffee-maker up in bubble-wrap, standing among a small pile of cardboard boxes in Shouyou's pink-linoleum kitchen. "What if we hate living together?"

   It had been a joke, and Kenma had smirked, and even now that he lives in a spider-infested little shoebox with smoke damage, he can't complain about it because he's living with Kuroo. After the wedding, they can even start saving for a new apartment, because Kuroo has scholarships and a part-time job, and Kenma has welfare and a knack for keeping himself busy all day. Combined, it gives them enough to get by, with groceries and rent, and the small portions of savings fed into their shared bank account. They have a modest one-bedroom apartment, a modest relationship with their parents, a modest sex life.  

   Kenma likes that. It's a comfortable way to live.

   This engagement is the most outrageous thing that he has ever done, but he can't imagine being so content with anyone else.

   The stairs creak, and the stairwell light blinks as he's slotting his key into the front door. the whole building, falling apart.

   Kenma has never asked what made Kuroo decide to move out at eighteen, stumbling out of his family home with a class schedule and a minimum wage job, straight into adulthood and the cheapest apartment he could find close to campus. Kenma was still living with his parents; at the time, he thought it was pretty cool to have a boyfriend who lived alone, even if he ate too little and the whole building smelled weird.

   He thought it less cool that Kuroo's family never invited him back, not even for weekends or holidays.

  
*

  
   He finds Kuroo on the couch, waiting up for him, as usual.

   Sometimes he falls asleep there, and Kenma finds him dozing, whatever channel he was watching taken over by infomercials or bubblegum-pink ads for phone sex lines. But tonight, he's awake, though barely -- just tipsy, in the sleepy way he usually is when Kenma gets home on Tuesday nights. The kind of tipsy that triggers an awful combination of him being cuddly, at first, and then falling fast asleep the moment they lie down in bed together, so that Kenma ends up pinned under the dead weight of Kuroo's arm all night.

   Kenma, himself, still feels shaken from his almost-sleep. The easiness of the company followed by the car ride had lulled him, but the lingering, sensory imprints of Shouyou's fingertips and Kageyama's hoarse laughter are bittersweet. He can already feel the flickers of anxiety at the edges of his consciousness if he thinks too hard about anything he said or did or how he looked or what they thought -- but he resolves not to let it keep him up all night for the... fourth? fifth? week in a row. Tonight, he'll sleep pinned under Kuroo's heavy arm. Just the thought warms him.

   Kuroo blinks, dazedly, up at Kenma as he crawls onto Kuroo's lap, and then their gaze breaks when Kenma presses his still-cold forehead to his fiance's neck. He smells like cologne and a little bit like smoke. He has a friend who smokes, Kenma recalls. Or is it two friends, from different circles - one from class, and one from work? Or maybe the smell is just seeping from the stairwell into the apartment, clinging to their clothes and their skin. Kenma hopes not.

   He wraps his arms around Kuroo as much as he can and holds himself there, feels larger hands moving over his back, over his shirt, up to the nape of his neck.

   "Your hair," Kuroo comments, flicking at the tips of it.

   "Yeah," Kenma says.

   "'s cute. For the wedding?"

   "Maybe."

   "You will look so cute," Kuroo mumbles, oddly seriously. If it was about anything else, Kenma would consider laughing.

   "I've been thinking," he begins instead, pulling back to look Kuroo in his lidded eyes again. They're dilated from the dim of the room. Kenma presses their foreheads together. "That we should get the... outfit... last. Just in case I gain or lose any weight, or change my mind. It's easier."

   "Okay," Kuroo says, nodding along. Kenma feels the muscle at the back of his neck shift as he does, his fingers are still laced there, but he can't tell if Kuroo actually registered anything he said.

   "I'll tell you that again tomorrow morning," Kenma promises, feeling an involuntary twitch of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

   "Okay," Kuroo says again, and grins blearily along, like he gets the joke. 


End file.
